The invisible men with the arms

When it comes to gender based violence in Arab transition
contexts, it is not only state militarism we should be concerned about, but the
proliferation of militias and weapons across borders, argues Mariz Tadros

In tandem with the 16 Days campaign to end violence against
women theme
for this year, “Let’s challenge militarism and end violence against women”,
several initiatives and commentators
have highlighted the role
of the state and armies in
perpetrating violence against women in Arab contexts. There is no doubt that
militarism, whether of a national or international character, has been
responsible for gross violations against women’s rights, and for the
perpetration of the worst kind of gender based violence worldwide. What is disconcerting however, is the way in
which the focus on state militarism has failed
to capture the role of militias in perpetrating violence against women.

In Benghazi, Libyan communities have been terrorized by
militias who took over the city in the absence of a strong army able to
regulate the infiltration of groups and their weapons into the country. Until
recently, Ansar al
Shari’ah, an Islamist militant group committed to the establishment of an
Islamic state in Libya had assumed the role of regulating public life and
gender relations became a primary target.
Many families in Benghazi had stopped spending leisure time in coffee
shops, ever since they became a target of a bombing
suspected to the work of militias. It is believed that the café was bombed
because it catered to women.

A female human rights activist working for the National
Council for Civil Liberties and Human Rights in Benghazi (NCCHR) had her car
burnt because she called for the disarmament of the militias. Ever since her car was burnt, she has had to
comply with the security restrictions set by her family: in order to do her job
which is document and monitor human rights violations, she now has to be
chaperoned by her father while undertaking her visitations in the field. Men
and women in Benghazi have not being able to live anything remotely resembling
a normal life. Being in public means living in daily fear of being attacked,
and private space is no refuge: across
Benghazi, women and men no longer celebrate weddings or funerals in long drawn
out processes: they are now mostly rushed affairs to enable people to return
home quickly.

Last August, according to the female human rights activist
working for NCCHR, members of Ansar al Shar’iah, an Islamist militant group,
stormed into a workshop on women and the constitution and kidnapped some of the
organizers for three days, challenging them on why they were working on this
issue. As a consequence, she noted, most international NGOs supporting women’s
rights work in Libya no longer operate in Benghazi, have closed shop and moved
to Tripoli. Recently, Niger’s president Issoufou expressed
fears about the possibility that " Libya falls into the hands of
Salafist terrorists and that the state becomes like Somalia." Ghaddafi feared that having a strong army
would carry the risk of a coup against him. Undoubtedly, should Libya be
Salafized, there is no doubt that women will become the primary targets of
these groups’ vision of what a proper Islamic society should look like, and the
battle over the country’s identity will undoubtedly be fought over women’s
bodies.

And it is the same story in Yemen. Morooj Alwazir, cofounder
of SupportYemen has campaigned to bring
to light the way in which Yemeni and US air drones have undermined the well
being of individuals, families and communities. However, she also notes that
armed militias belonging to different tribes are kidnapping people and
demanding a ransom in order to force the government to concede to their
demands. AlWazir’s brother was kidnapped by a tribe who demanded a ransom to
pay for the basic community infrastructure projects that the government had
failed to provide them with. While Yemen has long suffered from the easy
accessibility of weapons, the situation now has assumed new proportions Morooj
says : “Every time I am on my way to the airport, I feel like civil war is
about to happen tomorrow, I see trucks and trucks of weapons coming into the
country, it is very scary.”

The narrative on militarism of
this year’s 16 Days campaign against violence omits the experiences of women
living in contexts where militias have been given a free reign. No mention has
been made of how the dismantling or weakening of armies has allowed borders in
Libya, Yemen and Iraq to be porous to infiltration from terrorist networks who
have targeted women in their campaigns to purify communities of all that they
see as “unIslamic”. State actors’ responsibility in perpetuating violence is
spoken of, and justifiably so: the dysfunctional role of the police in
protecting women from violence on the streets of Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Libya
and Iraq is a flagrant violation of their most basic of citizenship rights.
However, human rights narratives make no mention of militias and their role in
terrorizing women. For example several statements acknowledge the role of
the army and men protestors in sexually
assaulting women in Egypt, but fail
to mention the well documented sexual assault that women endured at the hands
of members of the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafi movements who acted in a
militia-like manner in December 2012.

It may be easier to expose the
gender-based violence perpetrated by men in army uniforms than those belonging
to militias, who are more difficult to identify because they are not in regular uniforms, and are better able to hide
their weapons. However, failure to recognize their role in women’s lives will
distort our ability to understand women’s agency and what informs the choices
they make. For example, in contexts where the Muslim Brotherhood has had a long
history of political activism and charitable giving, the question of why women
rose against the Brotherhood-led government may seem perplexing. However,
stories from those who had voted them in, but then endorsed the revolt of 30th
of June, 2013 are highly telling. One woman mentioned that her residential home
was very close to the premises of the Muslim Brotherhood in Faoyoum, and she
described how the popular committees organized by their supporters that were
formed around the premises were holding
shoumas (a think baton made of wood,
used as a weapon) “They would stop me in the street and ask me where I was
coming from and where I was going. They would tell me you can’t walk from this
street, but you can pass through that. I felt my movements were under their
control”. It was one of the main reasons why she supported the revolt on the 30th
of June 2013.

The appearance of militia-like
strongholds at the local level may have been concealed from the gaze of
international human rights organizations, and the verification of their
identity would have been no easy task, but their presence did influence women’s
sense of human security in concrete ways that made them welcome the army’s
intervention afterwards. Women said the presence of army vehicles made them
feel safe.

The anecdote above, extracted
from a focus group held as part of a broader research project to understand why
people revolted on the 30th of June, is not intended to be an
endorsement of the army. However, it is meant to flag up the importance of
understanding how militias have influenced women’s daily experiences, even if
they have been omitted from the mainstream discourse on militarism. Again, this
is not to shift our attention away from campaigning against state militarism in
relation to gender-based violence, it is however, to argue that we need to also
expose the role of militias, whose powers have increased enormously since the
Arab revolutions. It is also to press for exposing the actors in the arms trade
networks and those behind them domestically and internationally

This article benefited from interviews and discussions
with regional activists in Austria, made possible through the Salzburg Global
Seminar on Transitions, co-organized with the Arab Human Rights Fund in
November 2013

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